[Congressional Record: April 8, 2003 (House)]
[Page H2918-H2922]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:cr08ap03-117]
STRENGTHENING AMERICAN BORDERS AGAINST ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Porter). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Tancredo)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. TANCREDO. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to discuss the
issue of immigration and immigration reform. It is a topic that I often
take this floor in order to advance, and I have over the last several
weeks chosen to separate the topic up into various component parts. And
we talked about immigration reform and how much it was needed because
of the dangerous situations that exist on our borders. That was the
first week.
We talked about, the next week, I tried to address the issue of
immigration and open borders and what that meant to the importation of
drugs into the country and the impact that that is having on our land.
Today I am going to talk about another aspect of this subject that is
seldom discussed. It is one that a lot of people do not want to really
focus on because they are not sure how to deal with it. I think
specifically of the people in, say, the Sierra Club, Friends of the
Earth, and a variety of other environmental organizations that are out
there and that focus in on matters that harm the environment; and they
have constantly come to us, come to this body in the form of lobbying
activity to tell us that we have to do more to protect the land and the
environment, the water, the air, because of what man is doing to it.
And yet there is almost a deafening silence, if you will, from the same
people, the same organizations, when it comes to the degradation of the
land that is as a result of the massive numbers of people coming across
our borders illegally, the millions of people that are crossing these
borders.
There is a great quote from a gentleman who is the program manager of
something called the National Parks Conservation Association. His name
is Randall Rasmussen. Mr. Rasmussen said, ``Organ Pipe National
Monument is becoming Organ Pipe National Catastrophe.'' I call it the
Organ Pipe Cactus National Dump.
I have been down there several times in Arizona. Of course, that part
of the country is beautiful. Arizona has a 372-mile border with Mexico
and it ranges from very sandy deserts and lava flows in the West, where
you get about 3 or 4 inches of rainfall in a wet year, to oak-dotted
grasslands and mountain-top forests in the East, where snowfall may be
measured in feet. Really, few areas of the North American continent
boast such natural beauty and such a great amount of diversity. Yet,
cutting across that landscape is one huge problem.
The entire region is getting hammered by wave after wave after wave
of illegal border crossers, by horse, by foot, by bicycle, motorcycle,
all-terrain vehicles, cars, trucks, even utralight gliders. They stream
across the border every day and every night. They dump tons of trash
and human feces in places that are set aside for their scenic beauty.
They blaze hundreds of new roads and trails through fragile desert
soils. They ruin habitats for endangered species and they start forest
fires that consume hundreds of thousands of acres of forest and brush.
When I was visiting the Coronado National Forest not too long ago, I
left there on a Sunday morning and a fire started by an illegal alien
campsite had been left unattended after starting a warming fire in the
evening, and then they walk on, and they leave the fire often times
burning, it caught the rest of the brush on fire, and before I got back
to Denver on the plane, before I got back to Denver, it had consumed
35,000 acres in the Coronado National Forest. We did not hear much
about that. Even if we did, we probably only heard about the fire, but
no one wanted to talk about how it started because this is a delicate
subject. This is because people get very antsy, even here in this body,
when we start talking about immigration and the impact of illegal
immigration especially on the Nation.
The reason why I have divided this subject up into various component
parts is because it is an enormous subject. It has enormous, massive
implications, immigration, that is, for our Nation. I have often said
that it will determine not just what kind of a Nation we will be in the
future, that is divided and balkanized, it will determine whether or
not we will be a Nation at all. And there are, as I say, implications
of massive immigration into this country which are absolutely
incredible and need to be talked about, need to be debated, even if it
makes people uncomfortable. And certainly this is one part of it. This
is just one part. That is the environment.
Mr. Speaker, I have been down to the border several times. I have
been both to the northern and southern borders of the country. And the
sites that I see are sites I wish many of my colleagues here on the
floor would also see. Sites like this on Department of Interior
wildland where new trails, abandoned vehicles, trash, and human waste
are strewn. These are trails that you see all over that particular part
of country. Trails like this. When you look on a trail map, by the way,
there is no trail there on the map, because these are not official
trails. These are all made by people walking through by the hundreds,
by the thousands; in fact, by the millions. Once they start these
trails, they will use them for a couple of weeks, and then they think
that we put sensors on them, and sometimes we do, the Border Patrol
puts a sensor on there, so therefore what will happen is they will move
over a little bit.
When you fly over this area, you look down and it looks like cobwebs
that spread out from a particular area coming across the border, but it
is really just the number of people that have come across by foot, by
horse, even, as I say, bicycles sometimes, and often times by cars.
Vehicles will be driving along a highway that is adjacent to a national
park or some sort of protected site, we will say a national forest, and
at some point in time they just decide this is it, and they will peel
right off of the highway and start right through the forest. And so as
you drive along that road, it may be a blacktop road, as you drive
along you can see on both sides where people have simply driven off the
road into the desert and, of course, are trying to take people into
this country and drugs into this country illegally, and they have
caused enormous damage to that environment.
They leave cars. Again, once they abandon the vehicle, once they take
the drugs that they were carrying in or the people that they are
carrying in and move them to a driven form of transportation, they
usually abandon the vehicle. So if you fly over this area you will see
literally hundreds and hundreds of abandoned vehicles in the desert
rotting away. They leave clothes. They leave trash, water bottles like
this in areas sometimes that encompass 50 or 60 acres and are knee-deep
in trash. These are called pick-up sites. These sites are areas where
people will come to on foot. They will come across the border on foot
into the United States, and then they have been told where they should
gather. And it is often on private land. It is often, however, in the
middle of a national park or a national forest area. They gather and
they wait to be picked up to be taken into the interior of the United
States.
Sometimes these groups will be as large as several hundred. And over
the course of about a month, many thousands will have gathered in one
place, waiting for their transportation into the United States. And
they are told by the people who bring them here, and often times we
refer to these people as ``coyotes,'' these are people paid by Mexican
immigrants, primarily Mexicans, but certainly not entirely by Mexicans,
paid by the immigrant coming into the country, the illegal, sometimes
$1,500, sometimes if the case is more difficult it gets more expensive,
where in fact we have cases today where we are looking very carefully
at people coming into the country from places like Iraq and Iran and
all over the Middle East. These folks have to pay upwards of $30,000 to
have to be smuggled into the United States. So it has become a very big
business.
[[Page H2919]]
Once they get them into these pick-up sites they tell them you have
to discard everything you have got, everything you have been carrying,
all the water bottles, all the trash, the food, the clothes, discard
everything because we have to pack you into, well, they do not tell
them why, they just tell them that they have to discard everything.
Then they pack them so tight into the backs of cars and trucks and
trailers and vans that many suffocate on the way up. But what they do,
of course, is to make room for more people. That is why they tell them
everything has to be abandoned here.
When you walk through these pick-up sites you will see literally tons
and tons and tons of trash. You will be overcome sometimes by the smell
because, of course, this is also a place where people deposit their own
human waste. And so the feces by thousands of people in this area, this
is certainly not a pleasant topic, I assure you, but it also is not
just unpleasant from an olfactory sense, it does not just smell bad;
when it does get a little bit of rain into this area, that is washed
into some of the water supplies. We have had ranches down there where
farm animals and ranch animals have stopped drinking in the wells. They
have essentially been ruined by this kind of activity. It does seep, of
course, into the ground, then, after it has been washed down into this
arroyos. This is not the kind of area, this is not the kind of land
where that kind of waste can be disposed of easily.
The rest of this stays in place. The Border Patrol is not going to
pick it up. The ranchers try to pick it up because it becomes very
dangerous, but they can spend their entire day, week, month, year,
picking up trash on their land. Their cattle eat this trash, especially
that black plastic that most of us have seen and we certainly use
ourselves. It is strewn all over the desert and the cattle will eat
that and die. We have had thousands of head of cattle here that eat
this trash and that die as a result of it. These are just, as I say,
some of the environmental problems that you have when you have got
literally hundreds of thousands, in fact, millions of people coming
across this land.
We have had archeological areas, areas of great archeological value
destroyed. In Pinacate, which is also a national park, the Mexican
soldiers destroyed some of the archeological areas, including one with
a 100,000-year-old drawing on the wall. This was according to the
Pinacate Park Director, Carlos Castillo.
In addition, the Mexican Army has dug deep trenches to destroy 19
clandestine airstrips which mar hundreds of acres of volcanic desert
that took 4 million years to form.
{time} 1900
These soldiers' markings could last for another 100 years.
Few parks really have taken a greater toll than the U.N.-designated
biosphere reserve El Pinacate and Arizona's adjoining Organ Pipe Cactus
National Monument.
Last year, officials caught 200,000 migrants coming through Organ
Pipe. Remember, we get one in five. That is a conservative estimate. I
think it is closer to one in 10 we actually will try to interdict;
200,000 were caught in Organ Pipe last year; 700,000 pounds of drugs
were confiscated in Organ Pipe last year.
The drug runners use every imaginable form of transportation: cars,
trucks, ATVs. When they are chased, they throw these spikes out behind
them, so that the border patrol, whoever may be chasing them, have
their own tires blown out. This is something, of course, that our
border police and law enforcement agencies use themselves, the spikes
to stop people who are chasing. In this case, the trespassers, the
people carrying either individuals or drugs, throw out these spikes to
stop the people from chasing them.
Again, cars that are abandoned all over the forest, these kinds of
roads that have been cut into the forest. Ruts that have been created
by so many cars coming across this area; this will not go away for
hundreds of years.
They cut down some of the cactus that actually grows in this area, I
mean, actually Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, that is why they
call it that, that is why the park is there because it does not grow
anywhere else. This is a unique form of cactus. They are cut down and
saguaro cactus are cut down and laid across the roads as obstacles so
people when they will be driving along the road they stop, their cars
are carjacked. They are taken and used to transport drugs and/or
illegals and then abandoned all over the area.
Meth labs, this is another interesting one. This is mostly on the
northern border, but not exclusive to the northern border.
In Canada, there is a group in Calgary, about 25,000 actually; about
25,000 Muslims reside in the Calgary, Canada area. Strange as that may
sound to some, that is the case. There are really several hundred
thousand Muslims in Canada. They have been immigrating to Canada for
the last several years. This one group in Calgary, according to the
folks I talked to that work security for the national parks and the
national forests, are telling me that this group is the one that is
primarily responsible for the importation into the United States of
millions and millions and millions of tabs that are the component parts
for methamphetamine. They are shipped from Calgary into the United
States. They are cooked at these meth labs that are out there in the
national parks and then the proceeds from the sale of these
methamphetamine go back up to the organization in Canada, the Muslim
group in Canada; and they use that money to support the terrorist
activities all over the world.
This particular site, this is a meth lab that is being cleaned up in
a national park. People have to come in there with hazmat suits. It is
a very, very dangerous area; and for every pound of methamphetamine,
there are 6 or 7 pounds of this material that is left, and it is a very
dangerous substance. It has to be treated like this, as I say, hazmat
suits and very, very carefully.
The drug smugglers will use natural caverns and/or tunnels, caves to
deposit this stuff. So we have got kids, we have got hikers, bikers, we
have got people coming in walking through the national parks,
legitimately walking through, legitimately trying to enjoy the scenery
and will go down into these caverns and into these various caves and
come in contact with this material and become quite ill.
The fact is that the animal life in most of our national parks have
been damaged by so many people coming through. This is a pristine
environment with a lot of people coming across the deserts. We find
that some of the migration patterns for some of these animals are
disrupted. They are kept oftentimes away from water because that is
where these pick-up sites are. So some, like the Sonoran pronged horn,
which is an endangered species, is becoming even more endangered as a
result of this kind of activity in their environment. Take this cactus.
As I said earlier, these are unique in the world, this kind of cactus,
organ pipes. We can see here the graffiti that they have carved into
it.
This goes on and on, and yet nothing is really said about this.
Nothing is done about this part of it. It is fascinating to me, we
actually send billions of dollars around the world to Third World
countries, Mr. Speaker. We hear the discussion on the floor of the
House. I hear it in the Committee on Resources.
We spend billions of taxpayers dollars in Third World countries
because we say in these countries we have to do something to help them
create an economic environment where they will stop degrading their own
environment, where they will stop destroying the forests, where they
will stop cutting down old-growth forests, where they will stop
polluting because they are doing it because they are a Third World
country, they are very poor; and so we have to come in there and try to
help them.
We go to Africa. We spend billions of dollars in Africa and in Latin
America trying to get them to change their economy, trying to do
something to get them to stop doing what they are doing to their land,
and we do this with great relish, and we do it in this way that makes
us think and feel good that we have taken care of our land. We know how
to deal with our problems. We know how to deal with the environment in
the United States. We have passed law after law after law. We have
slapped people into chains and sent
[[Page H2920]]
them off to jail. We have fined companies billions of dollars. We will
pick a person up in certain States and arrest them for littering. I
mean, we have got signs along the highway that says no littering. We do
a lot of stuff in the United States, but we completely ignore these
particular phenomena in our own country.
We have National Geographic specials, we see them all the time on
television. They are documentaries talking about how we need to do
things in countries around the world to address the problem of the
degradation of our environment on a worldwide basis, but no one will
talk about this.
No one will talk about the smugglers that have left 95 percent of
their garbage and junk vehicles in our borders. At Cabeza Prieta
National Wildlife Refuge, smugglers have made a 26-mile road into the
Growler Valley that slices into protected wilderness. I saw that road.
I have been down to Cabeza Prieta. Along the refuges is famed Camino
del Diablo where crosses mark places where 19th century travelers paid
for their ignorance of the area with their lives.
The dirt is now a dirt road. It features big pits of nearly
impassable moon dust. Smugglers just drive around these areas, widening
these pits a quarter mile into the wilderness. It is estimated to fix
the dirt road up to $30 million. That is if we can get down there to
fix it, but they are probably not going to get appropriations for that
purpose because why? Because that particular part of our environment,
that particular problem was caused by illegal immigration, and we do
not want to talk about that so we are going to ignore it.
As I mentioned earlier, there are cars all over. Officials estimate
smugglers drove 5,000 cars through protected wilderness last year
alone. Once that road is there, it will be there for 60 to 70 years,
says Vergial Harper, the refuge's outdoor recreation planner. Seventeen
abandoned vehicles now sit in the Growler Valley area. They probably
have to be removed by helicopters to minimize further damage to the
soil that serves as the skin of the desert, as they put it.
Do my colleagues know how much it costs to try and get one vehicle
out of there by helicopter? It is a very expensive undertaking. There
are thousands of vehicles all over the desert.
On a recent afternoon in Organ Pipe, discarded water bottles,
backpacks, hot sauce containers, and Spanish-language comic books
littered the ground around a sprawling ironwood tree estimated to be
1,000 years old.
Another endangered species' affected growth in Tucson, the Pima
pineapple cactus, is also in the way of crossborder traffic. Just
northeast of Nogales, fences meant to protect a patch of these cacti
from being knocked down and allowing cattle to enter and possibly
trample them, well, anyway, the fence is being destroyed. The crossers,
the horses and their vehicles, have also gone right through that same
plot.
The tiny cacti ``don't have any legs. They can't get up and move,''
Coronado national forest spokesman Gail Aschenbrenner said. At Leslie
Canyon Wildlife Refuge near Douglas, areas thick with a particular kind
of water umbel, an endangered plant, had been trampled to death by
illegal immigrants waiting to be picked up, according to a
congressional study. The plant has adapted to flood, draught and water
fluctuation, said refuge manager Bill Radke, but not adapted to people
squashing it.
So much of this has been documented by the kind of information that
even the Congress has had at its disposal by hearings, by the CRS, the
Congressional Research Service, and again, nothing, absolutely nothing,
done.
Let us talk about fires for a moment. Illegal border crossers are
suspected of causing eight major wild fires in southern Arizona in 2002
sticking taxpayers with $5.1 million in fire fighting costs. These
eight fires that charred 68,000 acres are nearly 108 square miles near
the border according to the Arizona Daily Star. Only the fires bigger
than 100 acres were included in that analysis, but officials say border
crossers cause many smaller blazes that were quickly controlled. Food
containers, juice cans, water bottles from Mexico were found at many of
the fires' starting points.
The Ryan fire, a 38,000 acre fire that raced across grasslands toward
Fort Huachuca in late April and early May. The Oversight fire burned
2,189 acres in the Huachuca Mountains. The Walker Community fire burned
17,000 acres west of Nogales in June. These were all started by illegal
aliens.
When we were down there, it was fascinating to talk to the people,
the forest service. They will tell you, they now have changed the way
that they actually try to fight the fires because it has gotten so
dangerous to go in there. There are so many people coming through those
forests with guns protecting drug trafficking activities that they do
not go into the forests at night even to fight the fire. So the fires
are allowed to burn because we are afraid to send people in there. We
are also afraid to dump the retardant on there because we are dumping
it on a lot of people who are out there. These are illegal aliens, but
there are so many in the forests that we cannot fight fires
appropriately.
The whole area is susceptible to this kind of thing, and yet again,
where are the environmental groups? I hear from them. I am sure every
Member of this body hears from people in the Sierra Club and everybody
else that are demanding that we do more to protect the environment.
Where are the groups demanding that we do something to stop illegal
immigration and the degradation to the land that occurs as a result of
this policy of open borders?
Just considering the environmental damage alone, we can wonder why
those dedicated to the protection of the land and its resources have
never intervened forcefully in any way. For example, the County of
Santa Barbara, California, where lawyers representing environmental
groups are ever ready to go to court on behalf of possible damage to
oaks, endangered species, habitat or wetlands, if they are disturbed in
any way by the action of California ranchers or farmers on their own
property. If there are similar organizations in Arizona, the vast
environmental damage being done by hundreds of thousands of illegal
immigrants does not seem to disturb them.
Evidently, political correctness demands that one first consider who
is destroying the environment, not the extent of the destruction itself
or whether it should be stopped. With environmental groups these days,
social justice is in the form of immigrant rights; and it trumps
concerns about overpopulation, damage to plants, land and wildlife; and
those are the quality of life issues in the United States.
These priorities mirror those of the Ford and associated major
charitable foundations from both the National Council of La Raza and
the Sierra Club where they give their financial support.
{time} 1915
Interestingly, the Sierra Club does have one part of its
organization, maybe 30 or 40 percent of their membership, that have
decided to start sort of a splinter group, I guess I would say, in the
Sierra Club. And they in fact have actually done a pretty good job of
trying to bring to the attention of the rest of the members of the
Sierra Club the problems that are endemic with our national grasslands,
our national parks, and our national forests as a result of our
completely and totally abandoned borders.
This is from a report to the House of Representatives Committee on
Appropriations on impacts caused by undocumented aliens crossing
Federal lands in southeastern Arizona. It was a joint project by the
Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Department of the Interior
and the Environmental Protection Agency. It was completed on April 29,
2002. It has only recently been released. It constitutes an extensive
and official documentation of the harm that migrant smuggling has done
to the fragile ecosystems and natural resources in southeastern
Arizona, and, one might reasonably conclude, other frequently traveled
areas along the southern border.
Sometimes our environmentally based arguments fall on deaf ears
because environmental effects are indirect or long term. I am reading
from a report that was issued by FAIR, an organization devoted to
immigration reform. Here are some of the quotes from the report to the
House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations on
[[Page H2921]]
impacts caused by undocumented aliens. Here are some of the quotes.
Page 2: Undocumented aliens crossing Federal lands in southeast
Arizona not only cause damage to natural and cultural resources, they
impact Federal land visitors, public services, Federal employees
working in the area, and residents and businesses located on Federal
and reservation lands.
Impact visitors: Let me tell my colleagues what happens. Here is mom
and dad out there in their Winnebago, camped out in any one of these
different types of campgrounds in our national parks, and all of a
sudden, and this has happened, all of a sudden they look out the window
of the camper and there, coming across the camping ground, is a group
being led by a guy with an M-16, a bunch of people carrying 60-pound
backpacks carrying drugs, and a guy following them with another M-16.
And I am sure they thought to themselves, this is a national park? This
is a campground? Am I in the right place?
Well, yes, they are in the right place. They have been confronted,
their vehicles have been vandalized and stolen by these people, and
they have been threatened by folks smuggling drugs across that border
and through our national parks. Yet nobody really seems to care.
Another quote: Certain Federal lands in southeast Arizona can no
longer be used safely by the public. These are our public lands. This
is where we want to go when we want to take the kids out hiking,
camping, and fishing. Certainly Federal lands in southeast Arizona can
no longer be used safely by the public or Federal employees due to the
significance of smuggling of undocumented aliens and controlled
substances into the United States. The mere number of undocumented
aliens traveling in the border area intimidates legitimate visitors and
creates a reluctance by some in the public to use the public lands.
I guarantee that is true. There are people who are afraid to actually
go into our own public lands.
Another quote: Ranchers, farmers, miners, and other legitimate users
of Federal lands are heavily impacted financially by smuggling
operations that cut fences, break down or leave gates open, damage
water supplies, steal or damage equipment, and disrupt grazing and
irrigation schedules.
Every week I come on the floor with a picture of another person we
are inducting into the Homeland Heroes Hall of Fame. These are
primarily ranchers down along the Arizona border that are having their
entire lives turned upside down. Their ranches are being destroyed, and
their government does not seem to care one iota. They are not coming to
help them, but they are facing the brunt of the invasion. And it is
just that. It is an invasion. That is the appropriate word. Michelle
Malkin, author, uses that word to describe her book. In fact, it is
title of her book, and it is about this phenomena. And it is absolutely
accurate. It is an invasion, but we do not intend to address it.
We are fearful of actually trying to stop it for fear that there will
be a political backlash here; for fear that some of the business
interests that support our side of the aisle will say we need the cheap
labor; for fear some of the immigrant and lawyer groups that support
the other side of the aisle will say, look, these are all going to be
voters sometime and they comprise a big chunk of our voter base, so let
us not talk about illegal immigration. These are the reasons why we do
not face the issue of invasion.
Going back to the report: Breaking and entering and burglaries along
the border are common and include historic and government structures,
employees, and private residences and businesses.
Another quote: Federal law enforcement officers assigned to land
management agencies and tribal police often face situations where they
are at personal risk and must deal with overwhelming odds.
In Arizona, on the reservation land that we refer to as the Tohono
O'odham Indian Reservation, they have about 1,500 people a day coming
in to their land, 1,500 a day coming in to that tribe's lands, coming
across it and destroying the land and the life-style of the people who
live there. Go down and talk to the Tohono O'odham Indians yourself.
Talk to the people who try their best to maintain some degree of order
on that reservation and they will tell you it is a madhouse. Life there
is a nightmare for them. I have seen little children, 5 years old,
walking around stoned. The drug smugglers have turned several small
villages there into their encampments essentially, because they have
been able to, both with drugs and money, entice people
into participating in this activity.
Going back to the report: The character of congressionally designated
wilderness areas have been reduced by the creation of unwanted trails
and roads, damage to existing trails, and large amounts of trash.
Encounters with large groups of undocumented aliens reduces the quality
of the wilderness experience for many visitors.
I assure my colleagues that that is true. When someone comes across a
bunch of people carrying drugs in and guns on their backs, it does have
a tendency to, as they put it here, to decrease the quality of the
wilderness experience.
Gates are rammed, security locks are cut, signs are driven over and
heavy damage or destruction of water developments and other
improvements by undocumented aliens traveling through the Federal lands
and seeking drinking water in remote locations occur regularly. Some
ranchers actually put out cups for these folks and say, look, do not
destroy the well, do not break the pipeline, here is a cup, here is
water. But they have disregarded it. There is some animosity there.
They break the pipeline, they pollute the well, and move on.
Recreational, cultural, and administrative sites are repeatedly
vandalized and damaged, 1,000-year-old carvings destroyed.
Would that not have made the front page in most papers around the
country if that had happened by a bunch of vandals destroying some
pristine area, some prehistoric site, for instance, like that? That
certainly would have made the news somewhere. But you did not see a
word here. Why? Because it was done by illegals. In one case it was
done by the Mexican Army coming across the border. Why were they in the
United States? They were protecting a drug load; protecting drug
traffickers coming into the United States.
Believe me, the Mexican Army, which is on the border to a large
extent, is not there to protect the border. They are there essentially
to provide cover for illegal drug activity on that border.
Going back to the report: Tons of trash and concentrations of human
waste are left behind by undocumented aliens. This impacts wildlife,
vegetation, and water quality in the uplands, in washes and along the
rivers and streams. It also detracts from scenic qualities and can
affect human and animal health from the spread of bacteria and disease.
We have not even gotten into the issue of disease tonight. We will
talk about that more at a later time.
State, county, and local governments and private property owners
experience most of the same problems caused by undocumented aliens
crossing their lands as mentioned herein. Additionally, there is a
significant increased workload on Federal and local court systems and
increased costs to medical providers caring for the sick and injured.
Health care providers especially are heavily impacted. Twenty-six
percent of all the people in Federal prisons are illegal aliens, 26
percent in Federal prisons. We do not know how much it is in State and
local prisons all over the Nation. Hospitals, especially their neonatal
care units, are closing up all over. Douglas Hospital is going through
bankruptcy. If it goes under, it is going under because of the care
they provide to illegal immigrants, without of course reimbursement. If
it goes under, there will not be a hospital around for 100 miles.
Back to the report: Literally hundreds, if not a thousand or more, of
new trails have been created on Federal lands in southeastern Arizona
by undocumented alien crossings. And more and more trails are being
created by the hundreds of thousands that cross Federal lands in
southeastern Arizona each year. This proliferation of trails damages
and destroys cactus and other sensitive vegetation, disrupts and
prohibits revegetation, disturbs wildlife and their cover and travel
[[Page H2922]]
routes, causes soil compaction and erosion, impacts stream bank
stability, and oftentimes confuses legitimate uses of trails on Federal
lands.
There are so many trails on lands that people that are out there
legitimately are looking for a way to get around the land, and they
take these trails that the drug users have created and, of course, go
off into never-never land.
The impacts of such fragmentation are perhaps most severe to breeding
birds, many of which nest directly on the ground in short shrubs and
trees on or adjacent to the network of undocumented alien routes. The
continual disturbance to nesting birds during day and night typically
leads to direct nest failure or abandonment of breeding birds. That
leads to increased predation on active nests and keeps birds from
maintaining egg temperatures and adequately feeding any young that do
hatch.
Again, let me suggest that if this were happening anywhere else in
the world, especially anywhere else in our country, there would be an
outcry on this floor. There would be an outcry heard by every news
outlet in the Nation. They would interrupt the report about the war to
talk about the fact that some bird has been removed from its nest, or
its nesting area has been destroyed by some sort of action taken by
man. In this case, however, because it is an illegal immigrant, we will
not hear a word about it.
There are high concentrations of human fecal material in heavily used
undocumented alien pickup points in and adjacent to washes, rivers, and
streams and in other heavily traveled routes. This also impacts
wildlife, vegetation, and water quality in the uplands, in washes, and
along rivers and streams. The human waste presents a health risk to all
people.
Now, this is in a report that is provided to this body and to the
United States of America, to the people in this Nation. We provide this
particular information. And what happens as a result of it? I wonder if
any of my colleagues have ever read it. I wonder if any of the news
media that so quickly uses this kind of thing to pick up on when they
say a report delivered today to Congress talks about environmental
damage, talks about global warming, talks about how the world is
changing as a result of man's interference with nature. Usually, that
just gets snapped up like that if there is one sentence in any Federal
report, scientifically supported, that draws attention to some problem
with the environment, especially some problem that we can attribute to
mankind. Well, we certainly cannot attribute this to anything else.
There is no way to say that what I have talked about here tonight is
not a problem created by human beings. What we can say, however, is
that this problem is not being solved. It is not being solved because
there is not some technical solution, or maybe we just do not have the
right kind of pollution control device and/or we have not come up with
the correct mix for gasoline to remove some of the pollutants.
{time} 1930
We cannot say that is why this pollution is occurring in our national
forests. We can say it is occurring because we do not have the will to
stop it. We are destroying this land. It will be gone. Our children
will never be able to enjoy it. Certainly their grandchildren will not
be able to, and how will we explain this to them.
Will we say it was because we just did not have the technology, but
there was an argument about whether or not it was really caused by
man's interference or whether it is natural. No, that is not an
argument that we can use in this situation. We know what has created
this. It is millions and millions and millions of feet across this land
every year. It is hundreds of thousands of vehicles coming across this
land every year. And for what purpose? To enter this country, to do so
illegally, to bring human beings or drugs into the Nation. That is the
purpose. Because we find that so sensitive, so off the charts when we
are talking about issues, we refuse to deal with it. It is amazing. We
cannot get an argument about what the cause is. Not a single soul will
stand up and argue about the cause here for this pollution. We know
exactly what creates it; but we categorically refuse to deal with it
because the subject is difficult to deal with because it is not
politically correct to talk about it as a result of human traffic,
illegal traffic into this country.
There are huge, huge economic benefits that accrue to certain groups,
to certain businesses, to certain individuals to have lots and lots of
cheap labor. There are political advantages that accrue to others to
have lots and lots of immigration into the country. These two things,
the political advantage, the economic benefit of cheap labor and
illegal immigration, stop this from being addressed. It is a shame at
least. It needs to be addressed. It needs at least to be debated.
Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am 100 percent wrong about what is
happening. Maybe this report is just fabricated, just a bunch of lies
that somebody wrote down because they have it in for immigrants. Go
there yourself if you think I am exaggerating this problem. I encourage
Members to go there themselves and observe it, observe the Organ Pipe
National dump and see whether Mr. Eggle, Mr. Robert Eggle whose son was
killed at Organ Pipe a year ago August, his son was killed there by two
people who had come through after killing four other people in Mexico,
part of a drug deal. They came into the United States and they came up
against Kris Eggle. He was a park ranger, and he was not trained and he
did not have the equipment to deal with terrorists. That is who they
were. And they cut him down with an AK-47. We went to where he was
killed, and Bob said the following: ``If they do not get the crime
situation under control, they are not going to have any resources left
to protect.'' That was quoted in Outside Magazine February 2003. His
son lies dead. The environment is being destroyed. Hundreds of illegals
are dead in the desert, all because we do not have the guts in this
body to take this issue on.
Americans do, I assure Members of that. Poll after poll after poll
will tell us that Americans believe we have to do something to control
our borders, something to reduce immigration to a manageable level. I
have a bill that would reduce immigration, annual legal immigration
into the United States to 300,000 a year. That is far more than came
into the United States during the heyday of immigration of the early
1900s. I am accused of trying to build a Berlin Wall.
And how can we create a bill for guest workers to come into this
country legally, how can we say we have some sort of legal immigration
number by say 300,000 or 3 million, how can we say that if the borders
are porous? It does not matter how many the government says we will
allow in or how many workers we will take in as a temporary basis. As
long as the borders are porous, they will come at their will, not
according to what our needs are. And they will pollute.
The only way to defend this Nation against the danger that exists as
a result of terrorist activity, the only way to defend this Nation in
terms of the drugs that are imported across this border every single
day, the only way to defend the environment in this Nation is to put
the military on the border to augment our border patrol and our Forest
Service personnel and stop this degradation of the land and stop the
invasion. That is the only solution to the problem. The only one.
Nothing else will work.
We must use the military to defend our borders against the invasion
until the Department of Homeland Security can effectively control this
problem. Until then, the invasion goes on. Our homes are threatened,
our lives are threatened, our environment is being destroyed. Let us
not shy away from that on the House floor. It is our duty, it is our
sworn duty to take on these kinds of issues, and I urge Members to do
just that.
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